Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A new report from Kaiser Health indicates states are now moving in the direction of capping or cutting prescription drug benefits.

Illinois Medicaid recipients have been limited to four prescription drugs as the state becomes the latest to cap how many medicines it will cover in the state-federal health insurance program for the poor.

Sixteen states impose a monthly limit on the number of drugs Medicaid recipients can receive and seven states have either enacted such caps or tightened them in the past two years, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KHN is a program of the foundation). The limits vary across the country. Mississippi has a limit of two brand-name drugs. In Arkansas adults are limited to up six drugs a month. Since June, Alabama has had the nation’s stingiest Medicaid drug benefit after limiting adults to one brand-name drug. HIV and psychiatric drugs were excluded. On Aug. 1 the state will relax the limit to its previous level — four brand-name drugs — after the restriction saved more money than expected and the state received money as part of a settlement with a pharmaceutical company.

Other states with Medicaid drug limits are Arkansas, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Rationing issues in Obamacare have long been a concern of pro-life groups. Although the death panels — the voluntary advanced care planning that pro-life advocates have been concerned about because it could have doctors financially motivated to promote less medical care and lifesaving treatment — occupied most of the debate, the National Right to Life Committee says other provisions cause concern.

Joe Biden really was right for once. If your life depends on these prescription drugs, Obamacare really isa big f***in' deal.

It took them two years to come to that uncivilized conclusion? Ewanick was hired as U.S. marketing chief in May 2010. Apparently, he exceeded expectations, because half a year later, Ewanick was promoted to global chief marketing officer. The leaked reasons for Ewanick’s ouster. Facebook and soccer, don’t ring true. In a normal company, when a marketing chief decides not to put ads on Facebook and to ditch football for soccer, a Facebook and football loving CEO simply would call the marketing chief and ask whether he’s serious. The same day, there would be a comment that the marketing chief was misquoted, in a normal company.

The Obama administration released illegal immigrants who went on to commit more crimes, including charges of 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, the House Judiciary Committee said in a report Tuesday.

All told, the nearly 47,000 illegal immigrants the administration was notified of but declined to deport between 2008 and 2011 under its Secure Communities program had a recidivism rate of 16 percent, the committee said.

They were just part of the nearly 160,000 immigrants — most of them here legally — who were flagged by Secure Communities during the three year period but who were either not eligible to be deported or who the administration decided to release. Those immigrants went on to be charged in nearly 60,000 more crimes, according to the committee and the Congressional Research Service, which issued a report on the matter.

...In June President Obama announced yet another policy that shields most illegal immigrants age 30 and under from deportation. That policy won’t fully take effect until the middle of August, but it has already had an effect on those being deported.

Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Thanks to the Obama administration's unconstitutional implementation of the "DREAM" Act by executive fiat, you can be sure that more innocent Americans will die or suffer violent crimes.

QOTD: "Spurred by the conclusion of a recent report that said that given the fact that China is the de-facto manufacturer of most IT equipment in the world, it could easily backdoor any computer well before it's shipped to its buyers, security researcher Jonathan Brossard decided to prove the practicality of such backdooring.

He set out to create a backdoor that is persistent, stealthy, portable, cheap, that allows remote updates and provide remote access, and whose creation and deployment cannot be attributed to any individual or state.

The result was Rakshasa ("demon" in Hindu), a proof-of-concept malware that is able both to replace a computer's motherboard BIOS and to infect the firmware embedded in other peripheral devices through PCI expansion ROMs, thus ensuring its stealthiness and persistency in case the BIOS was ever flashed." --Zelkja Zorz

The Web thingies are buzzing with news that a 3D printer — sort of a first-generation Star Trek replicator — was used to make a gun that actually goes bang when you pull the trigger. Aside from the sheer cool factor, the development makes it clear that a wide range of bans, restrictions and prohibitions are becoming increasingly unenforcable.

An American gunsmith has become the first person to construct and shoot a pistol partly made out of plastic, 3D-printed parts. The creator, user HaveBlue from the AR-15 forum, has reportedly fired 200 rounds with his part-plastic pistol without any sign of wear and tear.

HaveBlue’s custom creation is a .22-caliber pistol, formed from a 3D-printed AR-15 (M16) lower receiver, and a normal, commercial upper. In other words, the main body of the gun is plastic, while the chamber — where the bullets are actually struck — is solid metal.

The lower receiver was created using a fairly old school Stratasys 3D printer, using a normal plastic resin. HaveBlue estimates that it cost around $30 of resin to create the lower receiver, but “Makerbots and the other low cost printers exploding onto the market would bring the cost down to perhaps $10.” Commercial, off-the-shelf assault rifle lower receivers are a lot more expensive. ...

...HaveBlue's schematic, which he used on what's considered a relatively low-tech StrataSys 3D printer in these fast-moving times, are available at Thingiverse.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow have used a relatively low-cost system to synthesize chemical compounds, with the intention of developing the means to create custom drugs. That may well mean the end of the orphan drug problem around the word, and very real price drops on pharmaceuticals... From the BBC:

Researchers have used a £1,250 system to create a range of organic compounds and inorganic clusters - some of which are used to create cancer treatments... Longer term, the scientists say the process could be used to make customised medicines.

They predict the technique will be used by pharmaceutical firms within five years, and by the public within 20...

[The process] also holds out potential for evading yet another class of legal prohibitions on recreational drugs.

Think of it — a world of plenty, with easy localized manufacture of almost anything you might need. It's a world in which "that should be illegal" becomes a punch line.

The next time your control freak friends start in on their latest litany of should-be-banneds, tell them that their arguments are now irrelevant. Tell them why. And savor their sweet tears of despair.

To paraphrase Nicholas Negroponte, we are seeing the convergence of the "atom business" (physical intellectual property) with the "bit business" (virtual I.P.).

And virtual I.P. is exceedingly difficult to protect, as the RIAA found out.

While we may not always agree with your bizarre policies, we can’t even hide it anymore: we love your wardrobe.

You’ve undoubtedly become a fashion icon in the political world (move over, Jackie O), and your signature colorful pantsuits are as androgynous as you are. Watch out Prada and Balenciaga, pantsuits will never be the same.

And what a bold choice, Hil. You’ve really proved that you ain’t no stay-at-home trophy wife (we know you hate those) in those loose-fitted blazers and impeccably ironed slacks. We also love your gallant haircut; the term “coiffed to perfection” wouldn’t even do it justice.

We’re just gonna throw this out there Hillary, if you like it you can take it, if not, just throw it right back. We’d like to further address you as the First Lady... of Rainbow Pantsuits.

Respect. So just keep doing your thing, never fire your stylist and please never run out of hair wax. Oh, and Hil? This goes without saying, but you look wayyyyy better than Lewinsky. That’s for damn sure.

Everything old is new again. In this case, the ludicrous Newsweek Magazine, slipping ever leftward, attempts to replay its failed 1988 tactic of positioning George H. W. Bush as a wimp. Never mind that Bush 41 was an accomplished fighter-bomber pilot during World War II and nearly perished during a mission over Chichi Jima after being shot down (two of his mates died in the crash and many of his fellow pilots were captured by the Japanese and tortured to death).

So the wimp meme didn't work out too well for Newsweek in '88.

Which is why the geniuses are trying the same game-plan again, having failed to raise credible questions about Romney's leadership, ethics, business acumen, or executive experience.

QOTD: "H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" begins by drawing a picture of a complacent world of men who give little thought of what might be out there, who pay no attention to the "envious eyes" of the invaders that "slowly and surely drew their plans against us". We are aware and unaware of being at war, of passing men and women on the street who are slowly and surely drawing up their own plans against us. In the movie theater, we revisit that terrible knowledge that we are engaged in a war with no natural end under a hundred disguises. We recreate September 11 in our ten-dollar nickelodeons every summer and look to the sky. But it isn't aliens we are watching for. It's planes." --Daniel Greenfield

Sunday, July 29, 2012

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears.

Miniter, a two-time New York Times best-selling author, cites an unnamed source with Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.

Obama administration officials also said after the raid that the president had delayed giving the order to kill the arch-terrorist the day before the operation was carried out, in what turned out to be his fourth moment of indecision. At the time, the White House blamed the delay on unfavorable weather conditions near bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But when Miniter obtained that day’s weather reports from the U.S. Air Force Combat Meteorological Center, he said, they showed ideal conditions for the SEALs to carry out their orders.

“President Obama’s greatest success was actually his greatest failure,” Miniter told The Daily Caller Friday. ”Leading From Behind,“ he said, traces the arc of six key Obama administration decisions, and shows how the president made them — and, often, failed to make them.

...It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. Our two nations are separated by more than 5,000 miles. But for an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. We’re part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in peace. We serve the same cause and provoke the same hatreds in the same enemies of civilization.

It is my firm conviction that the security of Israel is in the vital national security interest of the United States. And ours is an alliance based not only on shared interests but also on enduring shared values.

In those shared values, one of the strongest voices is that of your prime minister, my friend Benjamin Netanyahu. I met with him earlier this morning and I look forward to my family joining his this evening as they observe the close of this fast day of Tisha B'Av.

It’s remarkable to consider how much adversity, over so great a span of time, is recalled by just one day on the calendar. This is a day of remembrance and mourning, but like other such occasions, it also calls forth clarity and resolve.

...It was Menachem Begin who said this about the Ninth of the month of Av: “We remember that day,” he said, “and now have the responsibility to make sure that never again will our independence be destroyed and never again will the Jew become homeless or defenseless.” "This," Prime Minister Begin added, “is the crux of the problems facing us in the future.”

So it is today, as Israel faces enemies who deny past crimes against the Jewish people and seek to commit new ones.

When Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust or speak of wiping this nation off the map, only the naïve – or worse – will dismiss it as an excess of rhetoric. Make no mistake: the ayatollahs in Tehran are testing our moral defenses. They want to know who will object, and who will look the other way.

My message to the people of Israel and the leaders of Iran is one and the same: I will not look away; and neither will my country. As Prime Minister Begin put it, in vivid and haunting words, “if an enemy of [the Jewish] people says he seeks to destroy us, believe him.”

...It would be foolish not to take Iran’s leaders at their word. They are, after all, the product of a radical theocracy.

Over the years Iran has amassed a bloody and brutal record. It has seized embassies, targeted diplomats, and killed its own people. It supports the ruthless Assad regime in Syria. They have provided weapons that have killed American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has plotted to assassinate diplomats on American soil. It is Iran that is the leading state sponsor of terrorism and the most destabilizing nation in the world.

We have a solemn duty and a moral imperative to deny Iran’s leaders the means to follow through on their malevolent intentions.

We should stand with all who would join our effort to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran – and that includes Iranian dissidents. Do not erase from your memory the scenes from three years ago, when that regime brought death to its own people as they rose up. The threat we face does not come from the Iranian people, but from the regime that oppresses them.

Five years ago, at the Herzliya Conference, I stated my view that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability presents an intolerable threat to Israel, to America, and to the world.

That threat has only become worse... today, the regime in Iran is five years closer to developing nuclear weapons capability. Preventing that outcome must be our highest national security priority.

I want to pause on this last point. It is sometimes said that those who are the most committed to stopping the Iranian regime from securing nuclear weapons are reckless and provocative and inviting war.

The opposite is true. We are the true peacemakers. History teaches with force and clarity that when the world’s most despotic regimes secure the world’s most destructive weapons, peace often gives way to oppression, to violence, or to devastating war.

We must not delude ourselves into thinking that containment is an option. We must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability. We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is our fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so. In the final analysis, of course, no option should be excluded. We recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and that it is right for America to stand with you.

These are some of the principles I first outlined five years ago. What was timely then has become urgent today.

Let me turn from Iran to other nations in the Middle East, where we have seen rising tumult and chaos. To the north, Syria is on the brink of a civil war. The dictator in Damascus, no friend to Israel and no friend to America, slaughters his own people as he desperately clings to power.

Your other neighbor to the north, Lebanon, is under the growing and dangerous influence of Hezbollah.

After a year of upheaval and unrest, Egypt now has an Islamist President... [and as] you know only too well, since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, thousands of rockets have rained on Israeli homes and cities. I have walked on the streets of Sderot, and honor the resolve of its people. And now, new attacks have been launched from the Sinai Peninsula.

With Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel from the north, and Hamas rockets aimed from the south, with much of the Middle East in tumult, and with Iran bent on nuclear arms, America's vocal and demonstrated commitment to the defense of Israel is even more critical. Whenever the security of Israel is most in doubt, America's commitment to Israel must be most secure.

...Israel and America are in many respects reflections of one another... We both believe in democracy, in the right of every people to select their leaders and choose their nation's course.

We both believe in the rule of law, knowing that in its absence, willful men may incline to oppress the weak.

We both believe that our rights are universal, granted not by government but by our Creator.

We both believe in free enterprise, because it is the only economic system that has lifted people from poverty, created a large and enduring middle class, and inaugurated incomparable achievements and human flourishing.

...You have embraced economic liberty. You export technology, not tyranny or terrorism. And today, your innovators and entrepreneurs have made the desert bloom and have made for a better world...

...I believe that those who oppose these fundamental rights are on the wrong side of history. But history's march can be ponderous and painfully slow. We have a duty to speed and shape history by being unapologetic ambassadors for the values we share.

...I believe that the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of America is more than a strategic alliance: it is a force for good in the world. America's support of Israel should make every American proud. We should not allow the inevitable complexities of modern geopolitics to obscure fundamental touchstones. No country or organization or individual should ever doubt this basic truth: A free and strong America will always stand with a free and strong Israel.

QOTD: "The unconscionable behavior of the political class should be thought of as a contagious disease that infiltrates any industry that comes within influence of the state. Government contractors, lobbying associations, favored corporations, and even the press all seek to use the monopolized power of government to further their own interests. Instead of attempting to roll back stifling regulations, many of these firms simply wish to get in on the spoils of the great extortionary scheme. The results are always the same. Politicians pretend to be saving the people from cold-natured capitalism while politically-connected businessmen and bankers act as if their commercial success is completely of their own doing. The hidden truth is both act in tandem to fleece the average taxpayer." --James E. Miller

Spotted at The Chicago Tribune, which reminds us "Arrest and booking photos are provided by law enforcement officials. Arrest does not imply guilt, and criminal charges are merely accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty and convicted."

Now, I have no idea whether these fine, upstanding folks are legal citizens or illegal aliens. Let's say, for the sake of argument, only one entered the country illegally and then injured or killed someone.

America's transition into a welfare state continues, as May saw a new all time high number of American households, 22.3 million to be exact, enter technical poverty and collect foodstamps...

...At the individual level, 46.5 million Americans lived off foodstamps, a 222,157 increase in the month, or nearly three times the number of people who found jobs in June according to the BLS. Next month this too will be a record, as it is currently just 17,367 before the previous all time high set in December of 2011...

...The good news, and we use the term loosely, is that the average benefit per household rose from all time lows of $275.82 to $276.76. Surely, the bottom is in and just like housing, there is on blue skies ahead...

Friday, July 27, 2012

GDP Report Worst In Over Year
Friday's Q2 GDP report will offer the most comprehensive picture of how quickly economic conditions have deteriorated, just days ahead of the Federal Reserve's next policy meeting.

Economists were predicting a second-quarter pace above 2% annualized a few months ago, but the consensus is now 1.2%. That would be the weakest in more than a year and down from 1.9% in Q1 and nearly 3% in Q4 2011.

A GDP rate less than 2 percent is basically nothing. For comparison purposes, the Reagan recovery -- after the height of the Carter recession -- saw GDP growth rates over 7 (seven) percent.

The Second City, with gun control laws so outrageous that the Supreme Court struck them down, basically prohibits law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves with firearms.

Which doesn't seem to be working out too well, if the last -- oh -- 50 or 60 years are any indication.

Six people were shot and five of them died during a bloody 12-hour period between 4 p.m. Thursday and 4 a.m. Friday, according to Chicago police.

Among the dead: two men in their early 30s in a gang-related slaying on the Southeast Side, a 22-year-old former CPS basketball player who recently committed to a Division 1 school for basketball, a 35-year-old clerk at a West Side gas station and a 25-year-old man killed in a drive-by attack in the Park Manor neighborhood...

A 22-year-old Chicago man [Micheal Haynes] who recently committed to play basketball at a Division I school died after he was shot trying to break up a fight over a necklace Thursday afternoon, according to family and authorities... Haynes, a 6-foot-7 inch forward was set to play basketball for the 2012-2013 school year in New Rochelle, N.Y., for the Iona College Gaels, according to a statement from the school.

...The lone survivor of the violence was a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the 6700 block of South Carpenter about 11 p.m., police said. He was shot in the arm and torso and treated at Comer Children’s Hospital for his wounds, police said.

In January, unless dramatic action is taken, the Defense Department will suffer even deeper, more devastating cuts. Consider: the one damn thing the federal government was chartered to do by the nation's founders, its most important mission, was securing the nation's citizens. And it has been put at dire risk by infantile, Utopian progressive fantasies of wealth redistribution and equality of outcome.

...The gross spending for Obamacare’s insurance expansions [now] totals $1.4 trillion for the 2013–2021 period—the same stretch in which $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts known as “sequestration” would apply...

[The CBO] also shows $400 billion in net 2013–2021 tax hikes, part of the onerous “Taxmageddon” also slated to start in January. Thus, the net cost of Obamacare would be about $1 trillion for 2013–2021. That’s how much could be saved by cancelling the planned spending and taxes in the President’s government takeover of health care.

...The cuts would [otherwise] shrink defense spending by about 10 percent through a crude, indiscriminate, and irresponsible mechanism. They must be replaced. What better substitute than two huge new entitlements that have not yet been implemented, that [more than] half the public doesn’t want, and that the government cannot afford? Take away Obamacare, and the entire sequestration is replaced almost dollar for dollar—without tax hikes.

...The Heritage Foundation previously listed the top five reasons for repealing Obamacare: (1) to stop adding deficits and debt, (2) to help prevent Taxmageddon, (3) to protect religious freedom, (4) to keep health care decisions with doctors and patients, and (5) to clear the way for patient-centered reform. Now make it an even half-dozen: (6) repeal Obamacare, and prevent an indefensible sequestration.

Repeal of Obamacare is paramount.

What can you do? Tell everyone you know to vote the straight Republican ticket.

Taking the Senate, holding the House, and giving Obama a pink slip will help save our national defense apparatus while repealing the Democrats' version of socialized medicine.

We need to do plenty of work on the RINOs, but this much is sure: Obama will devastate the military as surely as night follows day.

I'd be hard-pressed to pick an exact date, but suffice it to say that shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, vintage media committed suicide.

Thanks to Tom Blumer, who spotted the seminal admission in The New York Times, we have confirmation that journalism is as dead as Francisco Franco.

Put simply, the administration refuses to allow old media to report on any White House discussions without quote approval. And these former journalists go along to get along, compromising their principles and ethics to stay in good graces with this ludicrous regime.

• "[T]he (Obama campaign’s) press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”

• “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House.”

• “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position.”

• “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly.” Ratner believes that the Associated Press and McClatchy are exceptions; I’m less than convinced.

• “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”

Blumer predicts, however, that vintage media could make a comeback someday.

If the Times, with what remaining power and influence it has, began to document and report every instance where a sycophantic administration flunky demanded quote approval and it firmly refused, I’ll bet things would change — and quickly. But either [they don't] have the stones to try, or for the time being would prefer not to.

Perhaps the day [those] in this sadly compromised calling will find the nerve to be journalists again will arrive on about January 21, 2013 — but only if someone other than Barack Obama begins to occupy the White House.

It's worth repeating early and often. This administration is as lawless as any in U.S. history. From shipping assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels; to declaring the Senate in recess when it clearly was not; to bribing Senators to pass Obamacare; to failing to prosecute a single Wall Street executive related to the financial crash, co-mingling of client funds or outright fraud; to publishing "enemies lists" of those who dare to contribute to their opponents' campaigns; to actively promoting vote fraud; to ordering the "DREAM Act" by executive fiat, when it couldn't pass Congress; to disabling credit-card security in order to accept illegal campaign contributions; and the list goes on and on and on.

There's not much in the Constitution this administration likes, and the First Amendment -- whether through its attack on the Catholic Church or its virulent hatred of free speech -- is a primary target.